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PayPal Writes Down $228 Million on Investments After Uber

PayPal’s stake in the world’s largest ride-hailing business was tied to what the companies said was collaboration on technology.

PayPal Writes Down $228 Million on Investments After Uber
PayPal Holdings Inc. signage is displayed on an Apple Inc. laptop computer in an arranged photograph taken in Little Falls, New Jersey, U.S. (Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- PayPal Holdings Inc. will report a $228 million loss on investments before taxes in the third quarter, driven in large part by a bad bet on Uber Technologies Inc. just before it went public.

The San Jose, California-based payments company said the investment in Uber, for $500 million at the initial public offering price, had declined 34%. Another investment, in Latin American online retailer MercadoLibre Inc., had declined 10%, PayPal said.

PayPal’s stake in the world’s largest ride-hailing business was tied to what the companies described as a closer collaboration on payments technology. Uber is the most prominent app to use PayPal’s nascent Pay With Venmo feature. But Uber’s stock has under-performed due to a combination of slowing growth and accelerated losses.

A PayPal spokeswoman said the company’s guidance doesn’t incorporate expectations for stock price performance of their investments during the quarter given the “inherent difficulty” in predicting market fluctuations. PayPal said its investments have still generated unrealized gains for the company this year, due to better performance in earlier quarters.

Following the report, Mark Palmer, an analyst at BTIG, said he now expects earnings per share of 54 cents for the third quarter, down from an earlier projection of 69 cents. PayPal reports earnings on Oct. 23. The stock was up less than 1% to $99.93 at 11:22 a.m. in New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Verhage in New York at jverhage2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.